Doctor Who inspired Halle Berry sci-fi series Extant, says creator

Mickey Fisher wrote 'What would Steven Moffat do?' on a post-it note to help him pen the space drama

On the face of it, new sci-fi series Extant, which drops on Amazon Prime Instant Video today, has very little in common with Doctor Who.

One follows an astronaut, played by Oscar winner Halle Berry, who returns home after a year alone in space to find out that she's pregnant, while the other follows a charming Time Lord who travels through space in a Tardis and regularly saves the inhabitants of planet Earth from major catastrophe.

But Extant's creator Mickey Fisher has revealed that he was actually inspired by the hit BBC1 show and its writer Steven Moffat...

"While I was writing the pilot, because I'm a big Doctor Who fan, I had a Post-it note on the corner of my monitor that said, ‘WWSMD; what would Steven Moffat do?’. The answer was always, 'He would just write it better’, so I kind of just kept trying to do that," Fisher told The Telegraph.

"[Doctor Who] has such a great heart at the centre of it, and I think that was really important to me," he continued. "It's not a dystopian world. We want [Extant] to be something that people could relate to, this story about this family that people would appreciate."

Extant, which also stars Goran Visnjic and Brad Beyer and was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, is exclusively available in the UK on Amazon Prime Instant Video.